


Facts and Feelings

by seaweedredandbrown



Series: Andrew and Beast's spooky adventures: a Spooky October 2016 writing challenge [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Diary/Journal, Gen, Magical Realism, Writing Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 11:46:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8247578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaweedredandbrown/pseuds/seaweedredandbrown
Summary: Andrew reflects on the event of "Blue Lights (and a flower crown)" - or tries to, at least.





	

**Author's Note:**

> To prepare for the NaNoWriMo madness, I'll be doing The Writer's Handbook's [Spooky October Writing Challenge](https://thewritershandbook.tumblr.com/twhoctoberchallenge2016). This is day three - prompt: "Put your OCs in a situation where they encounter a ghost. Have them write a journal entry describing what happens." - and it, obviously, references the event from day one.

_Dear diary,_

_~~Sorry I haven’t been writing much lately~~ _

_~~You will NEVER believe what happened the other day~~ _

_~~Why can’t B and I just hang out, just for once, without anything weird happening?! JUST FOR ONCE, FOR FUCK SAKE~~ _

Andrew sighed, put the cap back on his fountain pen and threw it back into his pencil case.  
This wasn’t working.  
This wasn’t working at all.

He closed his eyes and pushed himself away from his desk, rolling his chair until he was far enough not to bump into anything as he spun a little. Spinning always helped.  
Maybe he could go and take a walk, too. He’d been sitting there for the past half-an-hour without getting any journaling done, which wasn’t that impressive a failure given that he had gotten up three times in order to:  
\- check what was going on outside;  
\- close the windows when the noises grew too loud;  
\- open it again when he realised it was just too damn warm inside.  


Three days ago, he was freezing and tonight was barely bearable.

He let a long breath out and pushed himself back to his desk. He could do this. It was just journaling. He used to love that, writing. He used to darken pages and pages in smudged blue ink, noting down his thoughts and the little details of his days. This was supposed to be fun. Why wasn’t it fun?  
Nothing ever felt fun anymore. Everything was just… bland, tasteless, boring.

He reached out for his mug and winced when his lips came in contact with tea that could only be very optimistically described as ‘lukewarm’.  
Brilliant. Bloody brilliant.

He could, technically speaking, yes, he could always get up and give it a twirl in the microwave. But that would mean leaving his attic of a room and risking running into his parents. He wasn’t sure he had it in him to go through their idea of small talk: it had been three days since the last when-will-you-please-get-a-job-leave-me-alone-I’m-an-artist incident, and Andrew knew, he absolutely knew that they too had been counting the days until it would be acceptable to breach that subject again.  
For Andrew himself, things were pretty clear: ‘never’ was a great time to talk about his future plans, since he didn’t have any, not that his parents needed to know that.

Bad writing and cold tea it was, then.  
This was a habit he really wanted to get back into. He’d stopped writing when things started to go south at uni and all he found himself rambling about was how tired he was and how bleak everything looked, and what was the point in that? Then he had moved to town, renewed old friendships and started new ones, met Beast… Meeting Beast had been one hell of a story, and if what had happened at St Jobard’s wasn’t one either, Andrew didn’t know what could possibly be.

Ghosts.  
He had seen _ghosts_.  


(And cuddled - no, not ‘cuddled’ - hugged - no, that was technically not a hug, he was against hugs - and slept next to - dear gods that was even worse - but ‘discovered the comforting power of Beast’s body warmth’ just sounded straight out of a bad romance novel - so ‘slept next to’ it was.)  
And he had slept next to Beast.  
(Well, that wasn’t what really mattered, was it? No need to mention that.)

He had seen ghosts and it had been the most amazing sight, all blue lights and flower crowns. Why couldn’t he put those feelings to the page?  
Feelings, feelings, feelings. Awe, sadness, bittersweetness; some distant ache he could not locate, a twinge in his chest. This wasn’t the sort of thing - he had never been too good at talking about, well, this sort of thing. Keeping a diary had helped, a little, but maybe that was not enough. Maybe he could try another approach, only state the facts.

He took his pen again.

_Dear diary,_

_Three nights ago, in the entrance hall of St Jobard’s Absolutely Creepy and Abandoned Mental Hospital, B and I were visited by ghosts. They were blue, translucent, dressed in whatever was fashionable two hundred years ago and wearing flower crowns._  
_(B and I had not planned to sleep there. We were caught by a storm and found shelter where we could. More on that later, maybe.)_

 _The first one appeared as I was already sleeping. I was terrified, but B wasn’t; they started communicating with her - that was a woman ghost - a woman anthro ghost - by waving and nodding and smiling. Other ghosts showed up afterwards, of all ages, and they started dancing and singing and waving. I write ‘singing’ but we couldn’t hear them and neither could they hear us (I think)._  
_It was_

A pause, pen lifted in the air.  
What had it been like?  
‘Great’ didn’t seem to cover it. ‘Magnificent’ was a bit too much. ‘Awesome’ was too pedestrian.

_It was gorgeous, a sight to behold, really. I had never seen ghosts before. I know they’re out there, I know they can range from the spitting image of your grandmother to a faceless flame of ether, I know they can be dangerous, I know they can be harmless, but I had never properly seen one, let alone dreamt to see one so close - nightmares do not count - and here I got to see several friendly ones._

_They were gone when I woke up, no trace of them, except a flower crown dangling on B’s forehead. ~~which was 1) very convenient to determine that this wasn’t a dream, 2) absolutely unfair, why did THEY get one and not me?~~_  
_I couldn’t really get B to tell me much about the ghosts afterwards; they’re always rather secretive about anthro culture and lore, but it seems that we all comply to the same rules of metaphysics. There’s comfort in that, though what was not comforting at all_

Ah, there we were.  
The heart of the matter.  
What really was pissing him off - Andrew could feel the pen directly tapping into his brain, now.  
Good.  


That’s what it was there for.

 _was the one thing B did tell me. They said people - and they actually said ‘they’, and by ‘they’ they surely meant us, humans - used to experiment on anthros in places like this. This is infuriating beyond measure. The things we’ve done to these people, these children, sentient and conscious, just like us, I can’t accept it. I just cannot accept it._  
_There’s a difference between reading about it, a footnote in history books, ‘anthropomorphs were given equal rights after the Moira - Artemis Accords in 1971’, and seeing it with your own eyes. And I can’t. I just can’t. They’re barely treated as equals now, we’re still a long way from the whole United In Our Differences thing, and now this…_  
_There must be something I can do. But I’ve seen what happens when I try to bring justice to things, I’m not sure I’m ready to screw up that badly anytime soon._

 _Yet I have decided to tell Van and Nat about it. There’s Van’s costume party in two weeks, so now isn’t a good time - if she says the word ‘pumpkin’ one more time, seriously, I’m punching her, it’s August, damnit - but then if I have to wait until November 1st, we’re never going to do anything about it._  
_So I don’t know what to do, except that I want to do something, so I guess I’ll hit the library, see if I can find some old newspaper or whatever._  
_I’m not trusting myself on the internet too much these days, you type ‘anthropomorphic history’ and three hours later you’re either arguing with apologists with terrible grammar or cooing in front of mixed wedding pictures. There’s just no in-between._

Yes. That was exactly what he was going to do. He put his pen away, stretched his arms and got up. Maybe if he was fast enough, he’d be out of the door before his parents would even realise he was out of his room.  
He gulped down the rest of his cold tea, grabbed his satchel and his coat, and made a rush for the front door, running down the stairs and barely escaping his mother’s enquiring gaze.

Shining light on the past was all fine and dandy, but at some point he was going to have to deal with the present.  
Meh. He’d see about that later.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the amazing [@johnnyfuckingappleseed](http://johnnyfuckingappleseed.tumblr.com/) for beta-reading as well as their constant hand-holding and encouragement, to [@minervacerridwen](http://minervacerridwen.tumblr.com/) to give me that one final push and to [@tanouska](http://tanouska.tumblr.com/) for being her excellent usual self. And thank **you** for reading. Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments!


End file.
